In the diary processing for making cheese, large processing machines are used that produce large quantities of cheese. In the processing of curd, conveyor belts are often used to be able to treat the cheese for a period of time under correct environmental conditions. To do so in a space efficient manner, conveyor belts are often stacked on top of each other in the processing machine. In such stacked conveyor belts the curd is normally first provided to the top conveyor belt and when it has been transported to the end of that conveyor belt the curd is shifted to a lower conveyor belt using a slide or chute placed above the lower chute. As the curd reaches the end of the top conveyor belt, it falls onto the chute and gravity makes it slide to the end of the chute and onto the lower conveyor belt.
These large diary processing machines are often continuously run for long time periods in order to optimize the use of the machines. However, they regularly have to be cleaned to meet food safety standards and to avoid any unwanted bacteria growth in the parts of the processing machine that are in contact with the food product that is processed. For that purpose the production is regularly stopped so that all of the parts in the machine may be cleaned. In many machines the cleaning of machine parts are made on site, without the need to dissemble the machine. This is called Cleaning In Place, or CIP.
As cheese processing is a relatively slow process, stopping and emptying a processing machine may take a while. The last cheese product has to be moved along all processing steps and conveyor belts before the machine will be ready for cleaning. Since the cleaning normally is done using chemicals, it is important that parts of the machine that are cleaned are empty before the cleaning is performed so that it is not possible to contaminate the cheese product.
There is thus a need for improving the state of the art to provide better processing machine to reduce the time consumption related to cleaning the processing machine.